Coronavirus daily update: Tuesday, June 16

A word about sports

ESPN reported this week that the Winston-Salem Open, held late every summer at Wake Forest, is canceled. Greensboro’s Wyndham Championship, rescheduled for Aug. 13-16, will have reduced capacity for fans — and perhaps no fans at all.

Triad minor-league baseball teams, which should be a month or so into their seasons, sit in collective limbo, mirroring their counterparts in the Major Leagues, who have no idea how to grapple with the logistical issues of the coronavirus pandemic: fan density, concessions, bathrooms, not to mention the players themselves, who work in very close quarters.

And let’s not even get started on the Ace Speedway.

I was considering writing an editorial on this gaping hole where live sports used to be. But, I mean… what is there to say other than it sucks, but it’s preferable to everybody getting COVID-19.

Not everybody is getting COVID-19, of course. But some people are. That’s the whole point of the numbers.

The numbers

• This is what passes for a slow COVID-19 day in North Carolina: 751 new cases, the second consecutive day of declining numbers, making it 45,853 total.
  • Those new cases come off 12,942 tests, which makes 5.80 percent positive. Another downtick.
• As of yesterday, we have 29,219 recoveries and 1,154 deaths, leaving about 15,480 cases.
  • We’ve got plenty of ventilators available, and about 25 percent of our hospital and ICU beds.
• Forsyth County, a hotspot for COVID-19 infections, has rectified its reporting of the growing daily number of cases by… not reporting the daily number, instead listing just the total count like Guilford does. Fortunately, I’ve got yesterday’s numbers right here.
  • Forsyth reports 2,283 total cases today, which means 33 new ones, which is not too bad. 1,367 have recovered, and, I assume, still 25 dead. That’s 891 rolling right now.
• Guilford County says 2,148, which means — whoa! — 120 new ones. There’s 1,110 recoveries and 99 deaths (four new ones), leaving 939.

A diversion

Miss baseball? Let me remind you of one of the losingest seasons ever, a record held by the 1962 New York Mets, who went 40-120 in the team’s inaugural season, finishing more than 60 games out of First Place. But fans loved them. Some fans, anyway. I found a documentary about the very first Mets fans, back when they played at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. There’s a lot of old footage of New York City in this one.

Program notes

• From the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s public-domain collection, tonight we’ve got “Wolf and Fox Hunt,” by Peter Paul Rubens, 1616.
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